Julia and the Bazooka and Other Stories was published by Peter Owen in London in 1970, two years after Kavan’s death. The title story, “Julia and the Bazooka,” is Kavan’s most famous short piece: “Julia” (transparently Kavan herself) describes her relationship with heroin — the “bazooka” — with a matter-of-factness that is more disturbing than any confession. The drug is not a vice or a weakness; it is a tool, a companion, a necessity. Julia uses it to survive a world that is otherwise unbearable, and the story neither condemns nor celebrates the addiction but simply describes it as part of Julia’s existence, as fundamental as breathing.
The collection draws from stories written across Kavan’s career, and it provides the best overview of her range: surrealist fables, institutional nightmares, addiction narratives, and lyrical prose pieces that hover between story and poem. “A Bright Green Field” describes a landscape that may be real or imagined; “The Old Address” follows a narrator returning to a house that no longer exists (or never existed); “World of Heroes” presents a dystopia of enforced masculinity.
The stories share Kavan’s characteristic qualities: spare, precise prose; a flatness of affect that makes extreme content seem ordinary; a refusal to distinguish between inner and outer reality; and a persistent, quiet desperation that never tips into self-pity. Kavan’s narrators accept their situations — isolation, addiction, confinement, loss — with a resignation that is not passivity but a form of extreme stoicism.
Collecting Julia and the Bazooka
First edition (Peter Owen, London, 1970): Hardcover with dust jacket.
Market values:
- First edition, fine/fine: $150–$400
- Very good: $60–$150